Coordinator
Ann Braithwaite, Women's Studies
Coordinating Committee
Susan Brown, History
Doreley Coll, Modern Languages
Pamela Courtenay-Hall, Philosophy
Jane Magrath, English
Jean Mitchell, Sociology/Anthropology
Sharon Myers, History
Jim Sentance, Economics
Lori Weeks, Family and Nutritional Sciences
Major in Women's Studies
Minor in Women's Studies
Women's Studies Electives
Core Courses
Women's Studies is an interdisciplinary program that explores scholarship and theories about gender and other social identities. Through core and cross-listed courses students examine identity as a category of analysis, investigate the construction of social differences, and explore the impact that these considerations have on knowledge production. Women's Studies involves the critical examination of feminist theories and research, the posing of new questions, and the expansion of human knowledge.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A MAJOR IN WOMEN'S STUDIES
Students pursuing a Major in Women’s Studies must complete 42 credit hours (14 courses) in the Women’s Studies Program. These credit hours must be composed of the 3 required core courses in Women’s Studies (101 or 102, 302, 403), and 11 additional courses from the list of Women’s Studies courses, with at least four courses (12 semesters hours) at the 300- or 400-level. Up to 4 courses may potentially be substituted for those on the list, only upon consultation with the Coordinator of Women’s Studies.
Women’s Studies Electives
WS 205 - Sex and Culture
WS 206 - Bad Girls and Transgressive Women
WS 211 - Selected Topics in Women’s Studies
WS 221 - Writings by Women (English 221)
WS 242 - Philosophies of Love and Sexuality (Philosophy 242)
WS 261 - Sex, Gender and Society (Sociology/Anthropology 261)
WS 263 – Global Youth Cultures (Sociology/Anthropology 263)
WS 275 - Social Inequality (Sociology/Anthropology 275)
WS 309 - Special Topics
WS 311 - Identity and Popular Culture
WS 352 - Kinship and Family (Anthropology 352)
WS 374 - Qualitative Research Methods (Psychology 374)
WS 381 - Women, Economics and the Economy (Economics 381)
WS 385 - Women in 19th Century Canada (History 385)
WS 386 - Women in 20th Century Canada (History 386)
WS 391 - Psychology of Women (Psychology 391)
WS 392 - Men’s Experiences (Psychology 392)
WS 401 – Medical Anthropology (Anthropology 401)
WS 402 – Cybercultures (Anthropology 403)
WS 405 - The Legacy of the Spanish Mystic (Spanish 405)
WS 409 - Special Topics
WS 412 - Theories of the Body
WS 435 - Gender and Sexuality (Psychology 435)
WS 436 - Media, Sex and Power (Psychology 436)
WS 451 - Women and Aging (Family Science 451)
WS 453 - Gender in European History (History 453)
WS 456 - Visual Culture (Sociology/Anthropology 456)
WS 466 - Advanced Topics in Gender and Sexuality (English 466)
WS 473 - 18th Century English Society and Culture (History 473)
WS 491 - Directed Studies
REQUIREMENTS FOR A MINOR IN WOMEN'S STUDIES
A minor in Women's Studies will be recognized when a student has successfully completed twenty-one semester hours of courses in Women's Studies, including 101 or 102, and either 302 or 403. At least six-semester hours must be at the 300- or 400-level.
>>>top
101 GENDER, EQUALITY, AND DIFFERENCE
This course provides an interdisciplinary, multicultural introduction to the discipline of Women's Studies, with a focus on the concepts of equality and difference. It explores how these concepts have been thought about and debated, and how they have informed theories about a variety of social identities. It looks at their implications for a number of issues, including bodies and body politics, sex, work, family, sports, health, and popular culture.
Three hours a week.
102 GENDER IN TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
This course provides an interdisciplinary, multicultural introduction to the discipline of Women's Studies with an emphasis on gender and other social identities in a transnational perspective. It explores how differences in time and place influence how identities are constructed, reproduced, and challenged, and considers the implications of these differences in a number of issues central to transnational theorizing, such as bodies and body politics, human rights, immigration, displacements and diasporas, and representation.
Three hours a week
205 SEX AND CULTURE
This course examines theories of sex and sexuality, and investigates how they are central to the construction and function of contemporary North American culture. It explores how boundaries between ‘approved of’ and ‘disapproved of’ sexual behaviours reflect larger social and cultural concerns, and challenges students to think beyond the more usual either/or ways of identifying sexuality. Topics covered include the social construction of heterosexuality, changing definitions of lesbian/gay/bisexual, challenges posed by intersexed and transgendered people, sex work, sado/masochism, pornography, monogamy, intergenerational sex, internet and ‘cybersex,’ and the ‘feminist sex wars.’
PREREQUISITE: None
Three hours a week.
>>>top
206 BAD GIRLS AND TRANSGRESSIVE WOMEN
This course introduces students to the multiple and varied ways of conceptualizing the idea of ‘transgression,’ exploring what kinds of events, people, and objects are thought to constitute social, political, and cultural transgressions at various times and places. It examines how ideas about transgression have been differently defined for different groups of people, asking how gender, sexuality, race, class, age, and abilities have been central to social definitions of--and anxieties about--transgressions. It also focuses on how people have used ideas about transgression to productively push against the limits of their own social positions. Examples of types of transgressions explored include gender bending, body-building, fat liberation, and ‘passing’ of all kinds.
PREREQUISITE: None
Three hours a week.
211 SELECTED TOPICS IN WOMEN’S STUDIES
This combined lecture-seminar course on a selected topic in Women’s Studies varies from semester to semester depending on the faculty member teaching the course.
PREREQUISITE: None
Three hours a week.
302 CONSTRUCTING DIFFERENCE AND IDENTITY
This course examines some of the differences between and among women, exploring how claims to various identities and politics have transformed Women's Studies. It analyzes essentialist assumptions about identity categories such as race, sex, gender, and sexuality, and examines their social construction and contemporary interconnections at the institutional level.
Cross-listed with Sociology/Anthropology (cf. Soc/Anth 307)
PREREQUISITE: Women's Studies 101 or 102, or permission of the instructor.
Three hours a week.
309 SPECIAL TOPICS
311 IDENTITY AND POPULAR CULTURE
This course introduces students to approaches to the study of popular culture and cultural studies, asking what is meant by the term “pop culture” and exploring it as a site of struggle and negotiation for a variety of identity groups. It explores both how social identities (gender, race, sexuality, and class) are constructed and represented in popular cultural objects and practices, and examines how those can make a difference to how people then interact with and in that pop culture. Course materials are drawn from advertising, popular events and trends, news items, film, TV, fan culture, zines, pornography, and the new communications technologies.
Cross-listed as English 314 and Anthropology 310.
PREREQUISITE: None
Three hours a week.
>>>top
403 THEORIZING FEMINISMS
This course explores a variety of feminist theoretical approaches, focusing especially on Anglo-American second-and third-wave feminisms. It provides comparative and critical analyses of how a number of different feminist theories have attempted to understand and explain gender divisions within society, examining the differences between, for example, liberal, radical, cultural, lesbian, psychoanalytic, Marxist, socialist, postmodern, third-wave, and post-feminist approaches.
PREREQUISITE: Women's Studies 101 or 102, and 302, or permission of the instructor.
Three hours a week.
409 SPECIAL TOPICS
412 THEORIES OF THE BODY
This course introduces students to what is often called “body studies,” exploring a range of theoretical and cultural accounts of the body. Through a variety of interdisciplinary readings and materials, it investigates the centrality of definitions of the body to understandings of the self, identity, and embodiment. It also examines how different perceptions of the body have been central to conceptualizations of sex, gender, race, and sexuality, and looks at some of the social and political consequences of these different perceptions.
PREREQUISITE: At least one Women’s Studies course, or permission of the instructor.
Three hours a week.
491 - 492 DIRECTED STUDIES
These advanced courses for qualified students (see Academic Regulation 9) provide for supervised independent or group study of specialized topics in Women's Studies. The topics offered must be approved by the Coordinator of Women's Studies and the Dean of the Faculty.
PREREQUISITE: At least three Women's Studies courses or approval of the instructor.
Three hours a week.
>>>top
